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The table shaped like Cambridge

Next City takes a look at how Cambridge is trying to increase public participation in land-use and planning discussions. Among the tools the citiy is using: A "mobile engagement station" - a wooden table carved into the shape of the city, with a map on its surface that residents sitting around it on their neighborhood-shaped chairs can draw on as they consider the issue at hand:

"We take a photo of the table, redraw it in an online GIS application, and then we have a file where we can turn [layers] on and off. We'll use [the table] to collect and scrutinize and analyze," explains D'Oca.

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Comments

Funny how Cambridge doesn't need a BRA.

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They do have a Cambridge Redevelopment Authority.

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But has an interesting history. It oversaw a lot of the movement of Kendall from a declining manufacturing facility to the economic engine it is today. And it never extended itself in to bulldozing entire residential neighborhoods (although this was certainly proposed, especially if the state had not been stymied in its plan to push through the Inner Belt). It helps that with no strong mayor, the CRA doesn't have its head appointed by the mayor and given free reign to run roughshod over the city. Remember, Kendall c 1965 was basically storage tanks, single story industrial buildings and parking lots … that happened to be next to MIT.

In recent years, it has focused on the formerly-industrial parts of Kendall Square. Say what you want about the design of Kendall (overly-wide roads, focus on cars over transit, especially streets like Binney, giveaways to developers cozy with city leaders) but it has certainly been successful for the City (Cambridge probably has one of the best budget situations of any city anywhere from the revenue generated in Kendall). BetaBoston also had a piece recently on how by not banning gene splicing Cambridge attracted the biotech boom's nascency which has since exploded.

Having said that, the CRA was run for several decades by Joe Tulimieri who, it turns out, was corrupt as the day is long and ran a small fiefdom which mostly included giving himself raises and not having enough of a board quorum to say otherwise. But he never had the power in Cambridge the BRA has in Boston. The current staff seems to be much less in the vein of old school politically-connected guy out to line his own pocket.

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in scope to only certain parts of kendall square

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The CRA is a mess. Just a few years ago it had all its city-appointed board members replaced, then the director resigned when people found out he was doling out the CRA's money without getting authorization from the board.

The CRA has far less power than its Boston cousin - the Cambridge city council holds the fiscal leash much tighter (and is a more powerful political entity overall than Boston's toothless council).

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I'd like an investigation. By the state or feds, if Cambridge can't do it.

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Kind of rude to mock an entire city's chest size, man.

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They burned them all in 1973

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Public display of the table involved erasing markings placed by the public without recording markings.

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